Your credit is like your virginity

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…easier to preserve than to rebuild.

Kids, we all know you should never cosign on anything. You do not want your name on any account that you are not personally paying for.

Well, some people learn lessons the hard way. Like when they finally talk their fiancee into letting them get an iPhone. And then get turned down for an unexplained mark on your credit record. Huh? Well, it could only be that internet account you put your name on at the request of your sister (remembering folks, that if such people had decent credit themselves, they wouldn’t need to ask such a thing of you).

I just knew when he came home last year and told me what he’d done that it wouldn’t end well. But by then the decision had been made and I couldn’t do anything about it, and soon I had other things to worry about. I hope now that he’s made pretty much every mistake in the book, that the shame of that denial under the harsh fluoro store lights will be enough to make him remember to never never take responsibility for anyone else’s accounts in future. It baffles me how someone who has no problems putting his interests first in the business world cannot say no to his family. (Or that they don’t turn more often instead to his brother who has more cash, yet blows it all on cars.)

Have you ever made the mistake of letting someone else use your good name? How did it work out?

There's more to read, if you want!

15 thoughts on “Your credit is like your virginity”

I agreed to let my parents take out private student loans in my name to pay for my college education, which they promised to pay when they became due. That didn’t happen, and I wonder if I would have found other modes of payment if they hadn’t promised to do that for me. Luckily the loans were a very, very small portion of my total college expense–$3K of a total of ~$20K, and I was able to pay it back with no problem after getting out of grad school (deferred to then). It was for my education, but boy was I bitter when they told me they had to renege on their promise–it’s the only one they haven’t kept.

For you, the good news is that he is plenty young enough to learn his lessons now and bounce back. the question is, is he learning, or will he keep making the same mistakes over and over? Your financial future now rides on the answer to that question. I have heard some married couples have a ‘family fund’ in which they save up a certain amount of money to give/lend their families, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. They also have rules like ‘no co-signing’ and it is clear that a breach of that rule is quite severe, as it threatens the future of the couple.

Saying no to family is always hard even when we know the right answer is ‘no’. I’ve been asked many, many times to co-sign loans and other things and I just can’t do it. Despite my ridiculous debt, my credit is clean and I just couldn’t risk having debt AND bad credit.

It is so hard to say no to family. We feel an obligation to help them. From my side, there have been many times my father has tried to get me to lend him money, do this and that for me but I’ve always refused because he has a terrible track record and I never wanted him to think he could use me in that way. Plus, I’m just too poor right now for anyone to ask for money from. 😉

Well, it’s not like he can/would stop speaking to her, so in that sense, there was a brief argument, and I suppose it’s been worked out. She hasn’t paid him back. I don’t expect her to (she’s a lifelong beneficiary so even if she was good with money, has very little. At one point she asked for our bank account number so she could supposedly make payments but there’ve been none.) I’ve mentally written it off. Forget (if not forgive) and move on with life – that’s how I see it – and never mix family and money again.

[…] already been a year!) we were dealing with the fallout of mixing family and money. Remember kids, your credit is like your virginity. Two years ago I talked about cheaping out and reminding myself that life isn’t a race or a […]

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